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Monday, September 14, 2015

Review of Europe at Midnight by Dave Hutchinson

After more
than a decade between novels, Dave Hutchinson has become positively
prolific.Producing a third novel a
little more than a year after the second, one has to ask: why?I guess a setting as intriguing as Europe
in Autumn is too rich not to contain further tales.Europe
at Midnight (Rebellion, 2015) is the follow up, giving rise to an
additional question: can its interaction with European culture and possible
near-future EU reality be as deceivingly sublime as Autumn?

Before I
answer that question, I will jump back a little.Europe
in Autumn finished on what Adam Roberts called a ‘knight’s move’.While for
me the conclusion was checkmate in three moves, other people thought things
were left unifinished—more of the game to be played, which begs Hutchinson’s
own question: what relationship would the new novel bear to the first
novel? The author’s friends’ reply?Spinoff.Accordingly, Europe at Midnight
is not a continuation of Rudi’s story from Autumn,
rather an expansion of the near-future EU Rudi lives in - and discovered at the conclusion of Autumn.

We get
acquainted with Rupert of Hentzau at the outset of Midnight.An intelligence
officer living in a bizarre hierarchical state that seems to have more than one
toe set outside of our reality, he finds himself investigating dead bodies
dredged up from a river, all the while attempting to keep academics at the
University he polices in line.Coming to
the the possibility the dead were part of a larger group who succeeded in
escaping the University, he has to wonder: escape to where?

The second
storyline of Europe at Midnight is
occupied by another intelligence officer, Jim.Living in now sovereign England, he is a member of His Majecty’s
Security Services and is called to a London bus stop where a man has been
stabbed under strange circumstances.England having bunkered itself down into a police state in its War On
Terror, Jim slogs through the levels of government and information he
gleans—real and otherwise—trying to get to the real identity of the assault
victim and his larger purpose.

Working
with a relatively similar idea from Hutchinson’s short story “The
Fortunate Isle,” I don’t suppose it’s too much of a spoiler to say that
Rupert’s University is a pocket universe, separate from European reality.(This fact is revealed within a few
chapters, even as Autumn ended in a different reality.)What is not clear, however,
is who created the pocket universe and why?

Faster
paced than Europe in Autumn, Midnight moves simultaneously through
two police procedurals.Where Autumn balanced character, plot, and
setting, Midnight is more
plot-centric, but does introduce the setting of the University.What I’m about to say is certainly more
preference than objective critique, so take it with a grain of salt.The pocket universe threw me for a loop in Autumn.By introducing the impossible to the yet
possible, it undermined the realism of the setting - a setting the didn't seem to require any additional fireworks to be engaging. The coureurs in Autumn were
the perfect device to explore the nuances of a Europe disintegrated into
innumerable polities and nation-states.The drama of the agents’ lives and activities thrived in such a
border-restricted setting, making for good reading.Conversely, the fragmentation of Europe plays
a tiny role in Midnight.About 90% of the novel takes place in England
or the pocket universe.In fact, if
Hutchinson had simply set the story in a near-future Europe, given the novel a
less inferential title, and changed a couple characters names, it quite easily
could be separate novel—so under-used is Autumn’s
setting.All that being said, there are
undoubtedly readers who enjoy such injections of ‘extra-reality,’ so judge for
yourself.

As I run
the risk of sounding petty, I would quickly say that no matter the plot
intrinsic or extrinsic to Autumn, Midnight reads engagingly
well.Using a similar structure, that of a plot chopped into
pieces time-wise with major gaps between sections, the reader becomes
increasingly engrossed in learning what the nature of the pocket universe is as
the gaps are filled.While far more overt
than Autumn, the spy vs. spy of Midnight is exciting.Mysterious dealings by mafia, government
agents, and unidentifiables manipulating and manipulated by Rupert and Jim, the
resulting story can be dense and satisfying as Autumn—something which readers who enjoy puzzling out undercurrents
of reality will certainly appreciate.

In the
end, Europe at Midnight is a
semi-departure from Europe in Autumn, a
branch of a railroad—if I may user the cover art as metaphor—rather than a
journey to the next stop on the line.Mode and voice remain the same, but the one major element of Autumn's conclusion becomes the focus, and in turn shifting the focus away from a balkanized Europe. Less character driven and more focused on
layered plotting, where Europe in Autumn
was more comparable to a John Le Carre, Ken Macleod or Christopher Priest novel, Europe at Midnight leans toward Tim
Power’s Declare or the work of
Charles Stross in its imaginative excursions.Whether the new elements are allegorical or simply part of the story,
however, remains for the third and final volume to answer—and I will read
it.

I suppose Europe in Autumn is relatively bizarre compared to the current state of Europe, but compared to some of Bruce Sterling's work of Stephenson's Snow Crash, is quite tame. I found it a logical possibility, unlike this book, Europe at Midnight.